Source Code new film from Duncan Jones (Merged)

I understood it introducing a new premise, and I know it didn't contradict what had gone before, because Rutledge was wrong about the exact nature of the source code. But, I felt that as an audience member, I'd been sold and accepted the premise that the people on the train couldn't be saved. I suppose I just felt that the multiverse addition was unnecessary and messy.

And, if a new dimension was created at the start of each loop, why did Colter remember things from the previous loops? And, why did Goodwin and Rutledge seem to remember things too? There was no indication that it was a new dimension each time, until the end when Colter/Sean lived.

Annoying to have to put everything in spoiler tags, but it has only been out a few days!!

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Yep, the fact that Colter retains the information he learns from each run is a big issue with the multiple universes theory and for me means the logic circle in the film isn't exactly complete. I guess the implication is that there remains a link between Colter and Sean-Colter that is allows Colter to retain the new information learnt, but I don't really find that particually satisfying.

I do think you are right having thought about it a bit more. Leaving it on the freeze frame would have still been an upbeat ending that leaves things more to the viewer to interpret whether Colter still 'lives' or not after the 8 minutes.

KidMoe, I wasn't trying to imply that the ending didn't make sense. I just would have preferred for that element not to have been introduced at all. Spoilers follow!

[spoiler]I felt they cheated a bit at the end, that they broke the rules established throughout the film. Those people on the train were dead, they were beyond help. That was made abundantly clear, as was the nature of the source code. I know there was some doubt about what could be achieved, but that was only ever in Colter's mind. Everyone else was very clear about how it worked.

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I think the premise was that everyone involved didn't realise how it really worked. They all just thought it was a time machine effectively.

Quote:

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A new reality being created each time. As far as I can remember, anyway. Nor did he ever live beyond Sean's death. He lived out the eight minutes and then his consciousness returned to reality, such as it was. Each time, Goodwin and co were getting more desperate, because time was passing and the dirty bomb was becoming more of a threat.

The last source code was the only time Sean was saved, as far as I remember. But you're right - in a previous loop he had lived slightly longer than the eight minutes, until he was hit by the express train. I did wonder what would happen if he hadn't been hit.

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He did live past Seans time of death a couple of times - you see the train exploding in the universe when he gets shot, and I think also when he gets hit by the train. This supports the multi-universe theory - if it was just a time machine, whether Colter-Sean was alive at the end of the 8 minutes, the original Sean's time of death would still be at that point and the simulation should end.

He lived beyond Sean's death a couple of times. So in those dimensions, Colter-Sean survived. It seems like when Colter-Sean died, he was in some way 'reset' to the lab, retaining his memories of that dimension.

Put my interpretation of the looped events within the spoiler tags again. I'm not convinced the screenwriters thought things through any more deeply; typically in such films, they create several different endings and pick the one that played best with preview audiences.

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My impression was not that he was automatically "reset" to the lab if he didn't die in the simulation but that the source code operators would have manually wrenched him out after 8 or so minutes anyway. This is part of the reason for Stevens asking Goodwin to switch off his life support in the primary reality at the end of the last source code run, so that his consciousness will live on in the parallel universe created.

Hence the reason he retained memories from previous loops is because his consciousness existed both in the primary reality and the simulation/alternate reality, so he was able to consolidate memories in the primary reality. In the final source code run, his consciousness transferred entirely.

Anyway I think we all agree they should have canned it after the freeze frame!

I suspect the freeze frame was the original ending, and someone meddled!

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It was no doubt adjudged the "happy ending", though the alternative we discussed within previous spoiler tags would have been pleasingly ambiguous and left hope rather than opening a whole new can of worms for the sake of a walk into the sunset. A similar thing undermined the Adjustment Bureau for me.

Last edited by Jack_Burton : 04-04-2011 at 21:25.
Reason: Playing it safe and labelling it all a spoiler!

Absolutely. Like Inception, there were holes and unanswered questions but you're still pondering the complexities of the film a few days after seeing it. It's the cornerstone of good sci-fi, creating situations where profound and left-field ideas are explored. I don't buy many films on DVD but will certainly bag a copy of Source Code.

And unlike Transformers, where you turn to your mate upon exiting the cinema screen and say "well that was crap" - and there's absolutely nothing else to say about it. All memory of the film is lost before you even walk out of the cinema main doors.

loved this movie - took me back to the 1990's with its refs to Quantum Leap & Groundhog Day alos the Hitchcock refs in the music score (Bernard Hermann) and some of the stunts - re Cary Grant in North by Northwest

Great film, far better than what the marketing and trailers were making it out to be. Was expecting the film to end at the freeze-frame but to be fair the last few minutes opened up the world of the source code even further and threw in even more questions so I like that.

Personally I loved the film. The premise interested me when I first heard it and, despite being mostly unimpressed with Moon I was curious to see how Duncan Jones handled this because his talent still shone through in that film, boring as it may have been.

KidMoe, I wasn't trying to imply that the ending didn't make sense. I just would have preferred for that element not to have been introduced at all. Spoilers follow!

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I felt they cheated a bit at the end, that they broke the rules established throughout the film. Those people on the train were dead, they were beyond help. That was made abundantly clear, as was the nature of the source code. I know there was some doubt about what could be achieved, but that was only ever in Colter's mind. Everyone else was very clear about how it worked.

I thought it was a nice ending that he chose to live out his last eight minutes in the source code, and then Goodwin let him go. For me, the last few minutes just diluted it, and betrayed what had been established as the premise.

Actually, having re-read your post, there are elements I disagree with. Throughout the film, there was no evidence of:

Spoiler

A new reality being created each time. As far as I can remember, anyway. Nor did he ever live beyond Sean's death. He lived out the eight minutes and then his consciousness returned to reality, such as it was. Each time, Goodwin and co were getting more desperate, because time was passing and the dirty bomb was becoming more of a threat.

The last source code was the only time Sean was saved, as far as I remember. But you're right - in a previous loop he had lived slightly longer than the eight minutes, until he was hit by the express train. I did wonder what would happen if he hadn't been hit.

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It was stated multiple times throughout the film that the source code dealt with parallel realities, it wasn't some last minute "twist" or change to the established rules. When Goodwin etc told Colter he couldn't save the train passengers,they meant he couldn't rewrite their currently existing timeline, no matter what he did on there their present wouldn't change. That train, and everyone on it, was always going to remain bombed to hell. That didn't mean they couldn't be saved in each new reality, but to the scientists that was irrelevant because their only concern was their own reality and the impending bomb threat.

It was stated multiple times throughout the film that the source code dealt with parallel realities, it wasn't some last minute "twist" or change to the established rules. When Goodwin etc told Colter he couldn't save the train passengers,they meant he couldn't rewrite their currently existing timeline, no matter what he did on there their present wouldn't change. That train, and everyone on it, was always going to remain bombed to hell. That didn't mean they couldn't be saved in each new reality, but to the scientists that was irrelevant because their only concern was their own reality and the impending bomb threat.

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Yep, alternate realities were mentioned though I thought it was implied this was only in the context of the 8 minute timescale i.e. they cease to exist afterwards, when it turned out in the final source code run that they prevailed (hence Stevens' message to Goodwin). The "twist" though was that Steven's consciousness did not die with his body but transferred entirely to Fentress' body in the alternate reality after the freeze frame. IMO, the ethical implications of this mean an ambiguous ending would have been more fitting

he steals Ventress's life , is he ever going to explain to Moynahan that he's done that ? is he just going to pretend to be him from now on ? etc.

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Yeah - does he choose to live a lie? (I think I could do it for Michelle Monaghan.) Also, does he intervene back at the air base in the new reality since his actual body there is not guaranteed the same fate?

Moreover, Fentress is screwed in every reality and powerless about it - the first time he dies in train bomb, then in subsequent universes his mind is hijacked and his consciousness erased regardless of whether his body survives the incident or not... bum deal.

Anyway I think we all agree they should have canned it after the freeze frame!

I don't.

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For me, the claim that the people on the train couldn't be saved never rang true. It was clear we weren't seeing time travel, and so the people in Colter's universe couldn't be saved, and that was all Goodwin and Rutledge were thinking about. We didn't get a good explanation of how the Source Code worked. I think it's entirely possible that it effectively crossed between universes to one that was a few hours younger. In other words, it didn't create those universes, they always existed. To me, creating another universe is more of a stretch than visiting one.

For me the most interesting aspect of the film was the moral question, about the status of the passengers and whether they could be saved. And so the film needed to continue after the kiss in order to address it properly. I think it's clear that their suffering matters as much as ours. That makes Goodwin and Rutledge rather callous. If the Source Code project was creating new universes only to destroy them in flames a few minutes later, that's arguably even worse.

I liked how the Source Code project seemed to be self-defeating. I suspect that whenever it succeeds, on whatever crisis, Colter and Goodwin react in similar ways and he goes back and prevents the crisis from happening. So the success of Source Code in one universe causes it to be unnecessary in another.

For an example of what I mean by "more wild", at one point when Colter wakes up, I thought he was waking up in another universe, with a different Goodwin running the lab. If there are multiple universes, then some of those other universes would have Colters in them, and the Source Code device could be facilitating a mix-up between them, so the Colter who comes out might not be the one who went in.

I agree with the comments about Colter having to live a lie, be a teacher etc which he's not qualified for. It's a shame he didn't ask Goodwin for some winning lottery numbers, or something, so he'd have some money to live on.

For me, the claim that the people on the train couldn't be saved never rang true. It was clear we weren't seeing time travel, and so the people in Colter's universe couldn't be saved, and that was all Goodwin and Rutledge were thinking about. We didn't get a good explanation of how the Source Code worked. I think it's entirely possible that it effectively crossed between universes to one that was a few hours younger. In other words, it didn't create those universes, they always existed. To me, creating another universe is more of a stretch than visiting one.

The postulate that a new universe is created each time source code is run is not such a stretch. Rutledge's explanation was "quantum physics and parabolic calculus" ( that old chestnut). The first bit alludes to the many-worlds interpretation that every event is a branch point, and all possible alternate histories are created. The Schrödinger's cat thought experiment springs to mind i.e. in one reality the cat is dead and a new reality branches off where it is alive.

The film probably appeased quantum physicists a bit more than neuroscientists i.e. the uncertainty principle that you cannot make observations of a system without perturbing it was also adhered to.

Anyway -no doubt more than enough geekdom from me here. I'll get my coat and head to the Only Way is Essex thread.

I was more impressed by this film than I had expected, and the up-beat ending was more satisfying than if they had left it hanging at the moment of the "freeze".

I noticed that in the trailer he said "What would you do if you knew you have less than eight minutes to live?" but in the film he actually said "... if you knew you have less than a minute to live?". In the film it was just before the explosion, but it must have been tweaked for the trailer to explain the plot more easily.

One difference is that (Rutledge claimed) the worlds created by Source Code cease to exist when the bomb goes off.

Have you read (spoiler for an SF novel):

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Neal Stephenson's "Anathem"? It has a section on consciousness and quantum theory that ties in with this stuff. (It's a good book, but very slow to start.)

Yeah it was - you said the parallel universes were already existing. And Rutledge's claim (whether a ruse or not) was to stop Stevens spending time exploring the alternate reality beyond his mission of ID'ing the bomber.